Academia Obscura

by Glen Wright

While an ex-Cornish game hen may be useless, a salmon that has shuffled off its mortal coil and joined the choir eternal is quite the opposite: far from being bereft of life, the uncorrected scans showed activity in the salmon’s brain and spinal cord. Of course, what they actually show is that improperly analysed scans could lead to the mistaken belief that dead salmon are unexpectedly pensive.†

  Thus the simple salmon shot to fame, becoming the top Google result for ‘salmon study’* and the poster child for corrected scans (literally – the paper started out as a conference poster). At the time the poster was first presented in 2009, around 25–40% of published MRI studies were presenting uncorrected comparisons; by 2012, when the authors won the Ig Nobel Prize for Neuroscience, the figure was 10%.

  It is not known whether the authors sought ethics approval for the study, though I understand that the salmon did not consent to its participation on account of it being dead, and a salmon.

  Notes

  For the love of trees, I have opted to keep this bibliography (relatively) short. For more details, please go to AcademiaObscura.com/buffalo, where I plan to concoct a multimedia extravaganza containing links, photos, and videos. If I get distracted and don’t get around to doing this (highly likely), I will at the very least provide full references and PDFs (where I can do so legally).

  * For example, Elyse Ireland from the University of Chester told me that for one of her team’s papers on techniques for detecting human blood (for forensic applications), one of the authors personally provided the blood samples. This involved giving blood three times for replication and reproducibility purposes.

  * The results were set aside and not revisited until much later when one of the co-authors was teaching a seminar on the proper analysis of MRI data. They needed an example of improper analysis and remembered the salmon data sitting unused on the computer.

  * Bennett was not reimbursed for the salmon, which was later eaten.

  † Here is my attempt to explain what is going on: The visual data produced in MRI scans is generally broken up into sections called ‘voxels’ (essentially 3D pixels). Such scans of the brain produce a lot of data – somewhere between 40,000 to 130,000 voxels per image. To identify the brain regions at work, two scans are compared with each other by looking at each voxel to see if it is ‘activated’ (i.e. if that part of the brain is firing). It is necessary to make thousands of such comparisons to generate an overall picture (and running the stats quickly becomes complex and cumbersome). This causes the so-called ‘multiple comparisons problem’: given the number of comparisons being made, it is inevitable that some of them will be false positives (e.g. voxels may appear activated through random noise in the equipment). During the 1990s, various methods were developed for correcting these red herrings, the most popular being to calculate the probability of a voxel being falsely activated and excluding those that are likely out of place. However, this can have the adverse effect of reducing the statistical power of the original comparisons (i.e. the false positives are removed, but true positives may also be excluded, resulting in false negatives). As such, not all neuroscientists use multiple comparisons correction when analysing their data and reporting the results. Bennett et al. argue that false negatives are the lesser of two evils and show, with salmon, that if the comparisons are left uncorrected there is a good chance you will see some brain activity wherever you look.

  * The study shares the top ten search results with just three other salmon studies: a report on the mislabelling of fish sold in restaurants (because we love salmon but would probably never order a fillet of slimehead), another on salmon aquaculture methods, and a study finding that farmed salmon get depressed.

  1 Hurley et al., ‘Detection of Human Blood by Immunoassay for Applications in Forensic Analysis’ (2009) Forensic Science International.

  2 Tweets by: Ethan O. Perlstein (@eperlste); NatC (@SciTriGrrl); Matthew Coxon (@mjcoxon); Alex Chase (@aechase); Myles Power (@powerm1985).

  3 Bezuidenhout, ‘Variations in Scientific Data Production: What Can We Learn from #OverlyHonestMethods’ (2015) Science and Engineering Ethics.

  4 Cajochen et al., ‘Evidence That the Lunar Cycle Influences Human Sleep’ (2013) Current Biology.

  5 Legagneux & Ducatez, ‘European Birds Adjust Their Flight Initiation Distance to Road Speed Limits’ (2013) Biology Letters.

  6 Hare et al., ‘Sepsid Even-Skipped Enhancers Are Functionally Conserved in Drosophila Despite Lack of Sequence Conservation’ (2008).

  7 Bennett et al., ‘Neural Correlates of Interspecies Perspective Taking in the Post-Mortem Atlantic Salmon: An Argument for Multiple Comparisons Correction’ (1995). The story behind the paper is recounted in a post on Scientific American: Brookshire, ‘IgNobel Prize in Neuroscience: The Dead Salmon Study’ (2012) Scientific American.

  ‘Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Unless you are an academic, in which case you probably have to teach regardless of your ability.’

  Academic teaching is a strange enterprise. It requires academics, stereotypically better known for their prowess in solitary tasks, to stand in front of large groups of reluctant teenagers of varying abilities and attempt to impart the rudimentary basics of subjects they have committed their lives to becoming experts in. All of this is generally done with little to no formal training.

  I am in the privileged position of only having to teach occasionally, lecturing on topics I love to receptive and enthusiastic students. As a result, my experience of teaching has been incredibly positive, if somewhat skewed. By contrast, many academics see teaching as an unfortunate but necessary obligation that detracts from their research.

  I asked the academic Twittersphere to complete this sentence: ‘Teaching is ____________.’ The following two responses best sum up the range: ‘Underrated, amazing, overlooked, essential, underpaid, rewarding, tiring, and inspiring.’; and ‘Dante’s Seven Levels of Hell.’*1

  Perhaps it is the sense of obligation that leads a lot of academics to resent the entire enterprise. Or possibly it is the ever-increasing teaching load, uncooperative students, and student reviews that often have little to do with the quality of the teaching.

  FAIL EVERYONE

  If teaching a class becomes too much, there is an out: fail the entire class. When Irwin Horwitz of Texas A&M University felt that an exceptionally awful cohort was beyond redemption, he sent the students an email:

  Since teaching this course, I have caught and seen cheating, been told to ‘chill out’, ‘get out of my space’, called a ‘fucking moron’ to my face, [had] one student cheat by signing in for another, one student not showing up but claiming they did, listened to many hurtful and untrue rumors about myself and others, been caught between fights between students …

  None of you, in my opinion, given the behavior in this class, deserve to pass . . . It is thus for these reasons why I am officially walking away from this course. I am frankly and completely disgusted. You all lack the honor and maturity . . . and the competence and/or desire to do the quality work necessary to pass the course just on a grade level . . . I will no longer be teaching the course, and all are being awarded a failing grade.

  The same day, Horwitz sent a similar email to the senior administrators of the university telling them what he had done, that the students were no longer his problem, and predicting (correctly) that students would protest. Equally predictable was the swift response from the university – you can’t just fail everyone.

  In an interview, Horwitz later said that the class was his worst in 20 years of college-level teaching and he felt he had no choice after his complaints to university administrators went unanswered.2 The move polarised academics, who either mocked him for being thin-skinned or praised him for taking a stand.

  This was not the first time an instructor has taken drastic action when pushed to their limits. A philosophy professor at Syracuse University caused controversy with his policy of leaving class immediately if he spotted a student texting, while two
engineering professors at Ryerson University informed students that they would be given three warnings about disruptions before the professors would walk. The university forced them to abandon the policy before they had a chance to use it.3

  Dear Student,

  I am writing to inform you that I have marked you absent for today’s class, irrespective of the fact that you were physically present.

  Our TA was sitting behind you during class and reported that you spent the entire class searching for pictures of ‘puppy golden retrievers with party hats on’ while attempting to stifle your laughter.

  Important and gratifying though that activity is, I strongly advise you to do it in your own time.

  See you on Tuesday.4

  PASS EVERYONE

  At the other end of the scale is the even rarer case of a university seemingly willing to pass everyone, regardless of the quality of their work. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was at the centre of controversy when one of its departments was found to be providing sham ‘paper classes’, apparently used to keep struggling student athletes enrolled so they could continue to play for college sports teams.

  The report of an independent investigation details the alleged depth and blatancy of a long-running scheme whereby students simply submitted a paper, generally of exceedingly poor quality, in exchange for the grade they needed to remain enrolled.5 This was discussed somewhat openly amongst coaches, teachers, and other staff.*

  The report says that department administrator, Deborah Crowder, masterminded the scheme and oversaw its running for fifteen years. She apparently graded the papers herself and awarded top marks as long as the papers met the required length. An email exchange between Crowder and Jan Boxill, who was an academic counsellor to women’s basketball players at the time,† highlights the farcical nature of the scheme:

  Crowder: As long as I am here I will try to accommodate as many favors as possible. Did you say a D will do for [basketball player]? I’m only asking that because 1. no sources, 2. it has absolutely nothing to do with the assignments for that class and 3. it seems to me to be a recycled paper…

  Boxill: Yes, a D will be fine; that’s all she needs. I didn’t look at the paper but figured it was a recycled one as well, but I couldn’t figure from where!

  As a result of these lax grading standards, the average GPA of the students in these classes was 3.61, compared with 1.92 in other classes. Student advisers from the athletics department maintained a list of struggling athletes and the grades they needed to stay eligible to play, and steered student athletes to the classes. More than 20% of the university’s athletes from 1999 to 2011 were enrolled in these classes.

  When Crowder announced she would retire in 2009, panic ensued. The associate director of the athletics advising programme wrote to a staff member that they should expect students to fail if they didn’t get their papers in before she left. Following Crowder’s departure, the GPA of the football team fell to its lowest level in ten years. With the eligibility of their athletes at risk, counsellors for the football team pressured then department chairman Julius Nyang’oro to continue the fake classes. He apparently acquiesced, and six more classes went ahead, one of which was taken by 13 football players.

  While the scheme clearly violated basic standards of academic integrity, there is no evidence that Crowder or Nyang’oro sought to personally profit or unduly inflate the stature of their department. Indeed, the investigation suggests that their hearts were in the right place. Crowder had herself attended the University and recounted that ‘she was left adrift by a faculty and staff that focused on “the best and the brightest” and failed to pay attention to students like herself who needed direction and support,’ so she felt she had a duty to help others who faced similar struggles. Nyang’oro was haunted by the fates of two athletes he taught early in his career who lost eligibility and drifted – one was murdered after returning to his hometown and the other ended up in prison.

  PAR FOR THE COURSE

  Fronting a sham class is likely the least effort you can invest in educating future generations, but given the dubious ethical implications, a more commendable low-effort option is to teach a course on a subject that students already know inside out. In 2014, the University of Pennsylvania’s English department began offering a course entitled ‘Wasting Time on the Internet’, taught by eccentric academic and poet Kenneth Goldsmith.*

  In the course, Goldsmith aims to use social media, cat videos, status updates, and online shopping as the inspiration for works of literature. ‘Could we reconstruct our autobiography using only Facebook?’ the course description asks. ‘Could we write a great novella by plundering our Twitter feed? Could we reframe the internet as the greatest poem ever written?’

  All the class requires is a laptop and a WiFi connection, though students also ‘explore the long history of the recuperation of boredom and time-wasting through critical texts about affect theory, ASMR,† situationism and everyday life.’ The course description concludes: ‘Distraction, multi-tasking, and aimless drifting is mandatory.’

  Taken at face value, the course may seem bizarre, but Goldsmith argues that daydreaming and distraction have long been an integral part of the creative process.

  Intrepid Slate journalist Katy Waldman sat in on one of the seminars and reported on the following diverse activities:6

  • The ‘30 seconds of heaven’ exercise, wherein laptops are rotated around the class, giving each student 30 seconds to open anything they like on your computer.

  • Watching a YouTube video entitled ‘Try Not to Laugh!!! (IMPOSSIBLE CHALLENGE!!!)’, starting over every time someone chuckles.

  • Applying for jobs using random CVs lifted from LinkedIn.

  During the class Goldsmith reminds students to seek out the ‘stuplime’, i.e. where the stupid and the sublime become so intertwined that you struggle to separate the two. ‘Something is so stupidly sublime or sublimely stupid that it becomes transcendent.’ This stuplime state of transcendence should, he posits, allow the creative juices to flow. But this hasn’t happened, yet. Goldsmith says that not one student produced anything interesting in the first few writing assignments.

  Waldman concludes that the class is ‘Just as provocative, infuriating and elusive as it sounds . . . As a concept, it shimmers with just enough promise to make the underdelivery bite.’

  Clearly keen to outstuplime this American maverick, the University of Leicester used Back to the Future Day* to announce that it had established a ‘Department of Transtemporal Studies’.†7 The course webpage promises that ‘Staff in the Department have extensive experience of journeying to a wide variety of historical and future periods’ and that ‘Anyone studying for a degree in Transtemporal Studies can be sure of solid employment and steadily increasing wages for at least the next 50 years (apart from a brief recession in the late 2040s).

  Table 5: Underwater basket-weaving and other Mickey Mouse classes*

  Course title

  University

  Course description

  Zombies in Popular Media

  Columbia College Chicago

  ‘This course explores the history, significance, and representation of the zombie as a figure in horror and fantasy texts. Instruction follows an intense schedule, using critical theory and source media (literature, comics, and films) to spur discussion and exploration of the figure’s many incarnations.’8

  Sport, Media and Culture (dubbed David Beckham Studies by the popular press)

  Staffordshire University

  ‘Examining the rise of football from its folk origins in the 17th century, to the power it’s become and the central place it occupies in British culture, and indeed world culture, today.’9

  How to Watch Television

  Montclair State University

  ‘The aim is for students to critically evaluate the role and impact of television in their lives as well as in the life of the culture.’10

  What if Harry Potter
Is Real?

  Appalachian State University

  ‘This course will engage students with questions about the very nature of history . . . The Harry Potter novels and films are fertile ground for exploring . . . issues of race, class, gender, time, place, the uses of space and movement, the role of multiculturalism in history.’11

  How Does it Feel to Dance?

  Oberlin College

  ‘Whether you say “I don’t dance,” or “I love to dance,” this course is for you.’12

  Stupidity

  Occidental College

  ‘This course examines stupidity.’*13

  Tu 9:50am to 1:00pm – Classroom: West Duke 105 – Office: 255

  Sociology/Psychology

  Soc 710

  Social Theory Through Complaining

  Kieran Healy, Duke University

  This course is an intensive introduction to some main themes in social theory. It is required of first year PhD students in the sociology department. Each week we will focus on something grad students complain about when they are forced to take theory. You are required to attend under protest, write a paper that’s a total waste of your time, and complain constantly.

  Passive-aggressive silence will not be sufficient for credit.

  Course Schedule

  Week 1 Introduction: This has Nothing to do with my Research Interests

  Week 2 This is all just Obfuscatory Bullshit and Empty Jargon

  Week 3 It’s Not Like We Can Even Predict Anything

  Week 4 Isn’t it more Complicated than that?

  Week 5 Aren’t these things Mutually Constitutive?

  Week 6 But what about Power?